A predominantly one-topic blog: how is it that the most imminent and lethal implication for humankind - the fact that the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" will not work with Iran - is not being discussed in our media? Until it is recognized that MAD is dead, the Iranian threat will be treated as a threat only to Israel and not as the global threat which it in fact is.
A blog by Mladen Andrijasevic

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Thursday, June 30, 2016

This morning a terrorist sneaked into
the bedroom of a 13-year-old girl, Hallel-Yaffa Ariel. He murdered young Hallel
in cold blood. A picture of her blood stained room is almost too hard to see.
There’s a teddy bear still on her bed, a red beanbag chair, some pictures on
the wall, shoes tightly packed in a bin next to her bunk bed. Why would any
person do this?

You
don’t murder a sleeping child for peace. You don’t slit a little girl’s throat
to protest a policy you don’t like.

You do this because you’ve been brainwashed. You’ve
been brainwashed by a warped ideology that teaches you that this child isn’t
human.

We will not let
barbarism defeat humanity.

There’s
no middle ground between beautiful Hallel and her unspeakably evil murderer.

Today,
each of us is going to fight back.

I
ask you to walk into your child’s bedroom before they go to sleep. I ask you to
hug them. I ask you to kiss them. Teach them that the values that Hallel’s
murderer most detested – freedom, diversity, pluralism – will never die; we’ll
always hold them dear. Tell them that we will never let fear, evil and terror
triumph; that we will always stand for justice. And this is how we will fight
back. We fight back first by fighting back, fighting the terrorists, fighting
their backers, fighting those who incite for such murder, whether in Hebron or
in Orlando, or in Berlin, or in Ankara, or in Belgium, anywhere. We fight back
by making sure that our collective moral compass doesn’t waver even a
millimeter.

Today
we will cherish Hallel’s memory. We will defend and honor her dignity by
redoubling our efforts around the world to defeat the scourge of radical
Islamist terror.

As markets quake and quiver, I know I am supposed to fret
about Brexit, the British exit from the European Union. Just as we were told
before the vote that only demagogues and bigots wanted out, we are being told
now that the yahoos won, the haters triumphed, vanquishing the enlightened
forces of progress. True, I worry about the markets and this messy divorce’s
mechanics. I recoil from the Brexiters’ chauvinism and cynicism, their
day-before delusions and day-after distancing. Still, the Euroskeptic, the liberal
democrat and the Zionist in me all cheer the British people for defending their
national identity.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s clumsiness, calling the vote assuming it
would fail, reflects the EU elites’ broader failure. They created an arrogant
bureaucracy contemptuous of national traditions and the masses’ common sense.
Opponents estimated that 65 percent of British regulations, nearly 50,000
rules, were EU-imposed, including idiotic bans on restaurants serving olive oil
in bowls and the “bent banana ban” on “abnormal curvature.” But underlying this
is a deeper, ongoing debate about World War II. The EU and UN believers decided
that the answer to Nazi nationalism was no nationalism. But the best answer to
bad nationalism is good, constructive, liberal nationalism.

Culture counts – and cosmopolitanism miscalculates. Just as the international
language Esperanto misfired decades ago, the EU stumbled because many people
like their cozy identities, tribal communities, national traditions. Meanwhile,
calling anyone worried about terrorism and mass immigration a bigot is as
bigoted as calling all immigrants terrorists. It takes too much education and
too many ideological blinders to ignore some of the problems that motivated the
“leave” voters.

Immigration benefits societies. Most Muslim
immigrants, like most immigrants historically, simply seek a better life.
Nevertheless, immigration can be destabilizing. Moreover, while few Muslims are
terrorists, almost all modern terrorists are Muslim – and by definition every Islamist
terrorist is Muslim. If elites tolerated honest conversations about
immigration’s blessings and curses, and about the complicated ways Islam,
Islamism and terrorism interact, the frustration that cascaded into Brexit –
and feeds Trumpism – would dissipate. Instead, the politically incorrect, who
are often correct but politically checked, feel angry, disenfranchised,
squelched – then lash out.

Candid conversations would have blurred lines
and reduced tensions rather than creating all-or-nothing worldviews reinforced
by fury. Politically correct shaming cannot obscure or solve the problems of
immigrant gangs, the assaults on national sensibilities, or the many Muslims
and Muslim preachers tolerating terrorism and enabling Islamism. With too many
native Europeans facing too many months without enough money, the economic woes
trigger larger social, cultural and political frustrations.

Just as decades ago the oppression of Soviet
Jewry helped Zionists see Soviet Communism’s flaws long before other progressives
could, Zionists today can see the EU’s flaws more clearly, and understand some
of the Brexit impulse. Zionists experience the politically correct blindness
regarding Israel that reflects a more widespread series of ideological blinders
the Brexiters detested and rejected. Zionists see the softness regarding
terrorism, the hypocrisy favoring undemocratic Palestinian terrorists over
democratic Israelis, the destructive self-hatred regarding Western values,
ideals and sensibilities.

Following the Holocaust, too many EU cosmopolitans
decided that nationalism was xenophobia, religion was superstition,
particularism merely selfish.

The cosmopolitan ideal became to construct a
Republic of Everything, open, welcoming, fluid, super-pluralistic.
Unfortunately, this Republic of Everything, while bringing some benefits,
frequently becomes a Republic of Nothing, lacking anchors, grounding, values
and tradition.

By contrast, Zionism appreciates living in a
Republic of Something, a political entity reflecting common ideals and a shared
mission, bound by a sense of the past that enriches the present and inspires us
to build a better future. Zionism wants the nation to pass what I call the
Richard Stands test, taken from the line in America’s Pledge of Allegiance –
“and to the Republic for which it stands” which elementary school smart-mouths
often rendered as “Richard Stands.”

Nations should stand for something. Nationalism
can be xenophobic or constructive, uniting people to build something greater
than themselves individually. This national grandeur is best displayed in the
liberal nationalism of the United States, Israel, Canada, and yes, Great
Britain.

Similarly, religion can be rigid, fanatic and
inhumane, but it can also be aspirational, inspirational and spiritual,
stretching us to be better people and live more meaningful lives. And rather
than seeing particularism as merely egocentric, the Zionist understands
particular pride as the best way to contribute to the broader world. By
fulfilling constructive liberal democratic national values, by embracing Jewish
ideals, the Zionist contributes to humanity, not just to a limited community.
Ultimately, rather than denigrating tribalism, the Zionist seeks to make
tribalism transcendent.

The Brexit voters voted against the EU’s
Republic of Everything and Nothing. Donald Trump’s rise reflects parallel fears
that as America becomes a Republic of Everything it is collapsing into a
Republic of Nothing – ironically epitomized by Trump’s bullying buffoonery.
Trump has risen as a reaction to President Barack Obama’s EU-like obtuseness
and political correctness. Hillary Clinton will fail – as did the EU’s boosters
– if she merely parrots the media and elite contempt for these worries. The
West needs candid, constructive, courageous leaders who address problems
honestly, offer intelligent solutions reasonably, and help rebuild visions for
modern Republics of Something creatively, thereby passing that all-important
Richard Stands test.

The author, professor of history at McGill
University, is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s,
published by St. Martin’s Press. His next book will update Arthur Hertzberg’s
The Zionist Idea. Follow on Twitter @GilTroy.

With all his declarations how he admires Churchill, Netanyahu failed to follow his advice – never, ever give in to dictators. Would ANYTHING justify this détente with Turkey? Well yes, it would make sense if it helps Israel defend itself against the existential threat coming from Iran. But this deal has nothing to do with Iran, it has to do with money It is pure folly.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

This is another May, 1940, when
Britain had found its soul and Churchill stood alone facing Hitler while the USSR
was in the Molotov-Ribbentrop
non-aggression pact with Hitler, and Beria with Stalin's
approvalwas murdering the 22 000 Polish officers at Katyn and the US had
not yet joined the war.

It is interesting
that the polls to the last minute were indicating a Remain win, and only the
real vote showed that people were ready for the Leave. Why such a discrepancy? I think it is all because of people being
intimidated into political correctness and that the migration issue had played
a considerable more impact than they were ready to admit, and that they all
saw through the Global
Outbreak of Mental Illness.

PM David
Cameron is to resign ( this is where the British politicians are outstanding,
since they take responsibility for their failures, like Foreign Secretary Carrington
did following the 1982 Falklands invasion by Argentina) . While Cameron did
warn of the poisonous
ideology and he was quite pro-Israel,
he, as Melanie
Phillips put it, “signed up to the appalling farce of the US-led surrender
to Iran”, so let’s hope that the new leader will be more resolute. Would Boris Johnson be better in this regard?
Perhaps, but I am not so sure as I said in my review of his book The Churchill Factor: Excellent, apart from avoiding to mention
Churchill's views on Islam.

The British prime minster
used his last Brussels summit to tell Angela Merkel,François Hollandeand
other European heads of government that anxieties about unrestricted freedom of
movement were at the heart of the decision by Britons to reject the EU.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Only four years ago, in an
interview with journalist Ari Shavit, Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon said: “The regime
of the ayatollahs is apocalyptic-messianic in character.... It will be
impossible to accommodate a nuclear Iran and it will be impossible to attain stability.
The consequences of a nuclear Iran will be catastrophic.”

Now, he says: “At this
point, and in the foreseeable future, there is no existential threat facing
Israel” (“Ex-IDF chiefs attack PM: ‘Time for Netanyahu to go,’” June 17).

Has the Shiite eschatology
ceased to be an existential threat to Israel overnight? As US President Barack
Obama himself told National Public Radio in April 2015: “What is a more
relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, they [the Iranians] have
advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the
breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.”

Moshe Ya’alon cannot
foresee 13 years into the future, and he wishes to be prime minister?

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Ari Shavit: If so, maybe it’s already too late. The Iranians won
and we lost and we have to resign ourselves to Iran’s being in possession of
nuclear weapons in the near future.

Moshe Yaalon: “Absolutely not. It will be disastrous if we or
the international community become resigned to the idea of a nuclear Iran. The
regime of the ayatollahs is apocalyptic-messianic in character. It poses a
challenge to Western culture and to the world order. Its scale of values and
its religious beliefs are different, and its ambition is to foist them on
everyone. Accordingly, it is an obligation to prevent this nonconventional
regime from acquiring nonconventional weapons. Neither we nor the West is at
liberty to accept an Iranian nuclear bomb. What I am telling you is not
rhetoric and it is not propaganda. A nuclear Iran is a true threat to world
peace.”

Ari Shavit: But the Iranians are rational, and the use of
nuclear weapons is an irrational act. Like the Soviets, they will never do
that.

Moshe Yaalon: “A Western individual observing the fantastic
ambitions of the Iranian leadership scoffs: ‘What do they think, that they will
Islamize us?’ The surprising answer is: Yes, they think they will Islamize us:
The ambition of the present regime in Tehran is for the Western world to become
Muslim at the end of a lengthy process. Accordingly, we have to understand that
their rationality is completely different from our rationality. Their concepts
are different and their considerations are different. They are completely
unlike the former Soviet Union. They are not even like Pakistan or North Korea.
If Iran enjoys a nuclear umbrella and the feeling of strength of a nuclear
power, there is no knowing how it will behave. It will be impossible to
accommodate a nuclear Iran and it will be impossible to attain stability. The
consequences of a nuclear Iran will be catastrophic.”

he “Bogie” Ya’alon will run for national leadership in
Israel's next elections, he announced during a speech at the Herzliya
Conference on Thursday.

Ya’alon also attacked the current leadership of Israel, saying “at this point,
and in the foreseeable future, there is no existential threat facing Israel.
Thus it is fitting that the leadership of the country stop scaring the
citizenry and stop giving them the feeling that we are standing before a second
Holocaust.”

Ya'alon said that it isn't security threats that keep him awake at night,
rather the social and moral problems facing Israel.

If there is something that I lose sleep at night about, it’s
not the truckloads of weapons in Syria and Lebanon or Iran’s attempts to wage
terror – Israel has the capabilities to deal with these forcefully and with
sophistication. If there is something that I lose sleep over, it’s the cracks
in Israel’s society, the erosion of basic values, the attempts to harm IDF
soldiers and their commanders. It is a fact – the leadership is tempestuous and
being dragged.”

He also said of Iran that nuclear program, for
years a major focus of Prime Minister Netanyahu, will "be frozen in light
of the the [nuclear] deal signed [by world powers] does not constitute an immediate,
existential threat for Israel."

The speech was the first given by Ya’alon since
he resigned from the government on May 20th, a decision he said he made
"following the recent conduct" of Netanyahu, and "in light of my
lack of faith in him."

Ya’alon’s decision to leave the government came
after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ousted him as defense minister in favor
of Avigdor Liberman, as part of negotiations to bring the Yisrael Beytenu party
into the coalition.

Ya'alon also spoke of the importance of Israel's
alliance with the United States, which he described as essential to
Israel's security and diplomatic needs.

Following Ya'alon's remarks, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party accused the former defense minister Moshe
Ya'alon of flip-flopping on his previous positions.

"Just a few months ago he said Iran is an
existential concern for Israel, today when turned into a politician at the
Herzliya Conference, he said that Israel faces no existential threat," the
party said in a statement. "It's funny how quickly Ya'alon changed his
hide."

In a surprise move, First Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Humam Hamoudi announced that his country is determined to sue Israel for bombing the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.In a statement issued on Tuesday, Hamoudi said: "Iraq is determined to sue Israel for bombing the nuclear reactor and force it to pay reparations for this attack," without specifying when it will take such a measure."The Foreign Ministry and the Parliament's Committee on Foreign Relations should promote this issue internationally and draw special attention to it, in light of the 35th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the nuclear reactor," Hamoudi added.

The senior Iraqi official also called on the United Nations to implement Resolution 487 (1981) that allows Iraq to demand reparations for the Israeli military strike on the nuclear reactor and heavily denounces the attack.The head of the Parliament's Committee on Foreign Relations, Abdel Bari Zibari, told the Turkish news agency Anadolu: "Until now, Iraq has not received international support to sue Israel for bombing the nuclear reactor. In order to do so, it will need this support, and especially the support of the permanent members of the UN Security Council."The Iraqi nuclear reactor that was located in southeast Baghdad was bombed by the Israeli Air Force on June 7, 1981, which ruined big parts of the reactor that was still under construction.****There is an excellent book by Rodger W. Claire Raid on the Sun: Inside
Israel's Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb

Why the Status
Quo Is Sustainable

Was
the feud between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, first over settlements and then over Iran, a watershed?
Netanyahu, it is claimed, turned U.S. support of Israelinto
a partisan issue. Liberals, including many American Jews, are said to be fed up
with Israel’s “occupation,” which will mark its 50th anniversary next year. The
weakening of Israel’sdemocratic ethosis
supposedly undercutting the “shared values” argument for the relationship. Some
say Israel’s dogged adherence to an“unsus­tainable” status quoin
the West Bank has made it a liability in a region in the throes of change.
Israel, it is claimed, is slipping into pariah status, imposed by the global
movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).

Biblical-style lamentations over Israel’s
final corruption have been a staple of the state’s critics and die-hard
anti-Zionists for 70 years. Never have they been so detached from reality. Of
course, Israel has changed—decidedly for the better. By every measure, Israel
is more globalized, prosperous, and democratic than at any time in its history.
As nearby parts of the Middle East slip under waves of ruthless sectarian
strife,Israel’s minor­itiesrest
secure. As Europe staggers under the weight of unwanted Muslim migrants, Israel
welcomes thousands of Jewish immigrants from Europe. As other Mediterranean
countries struggle with debt and unemployment, Israel boasts a growing economy,
supported by waves of foreign investment.

Politically, Netanyahu’s tenure has been
Israel’s least tumultuous. Netanyahu has served longer than any other Israeli
prime minister except David Ben-Gurion, yet he has led Israel in only one
ground war: the limited Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014. “I’d feel
better if our partner was not the trigger-happy Netanyahu,”wrotetheNew York Timescolumnist
Maureen Dowd four years ago. But Netanyahu hasn’t pulled triggers, even against
Iran. The Israeli electorate keeps returning him to office precisely because he
is risk averse: no needless wars, but no ambitious peace plans either. Although
this may produce “overwhelming frustration”
in Obama’s White House, in Vice President Joe Biden’s scolding phrase, it suits
the majority of Israeli Jews just fine.

Netanyahu’s endurance fuels the frustration
of Israel’sdiminished left, too: thwarted at the ballot
box, they comfort themselves with a false notion thatIsrael’s
democracy is endangered. The right made similar claims 20 years ago,
culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Anti-democratic forces exist in all democracies, but in Israel, they are either
outside the system or confined in smaller parties, Jewish and Arab alike. There
is no mechanism by which an outlier could capture one of the main political
parties in a populist upsurge, as now seems likely in the United States. Under
com­parable pressures of terrorism and war, even old democracies have wavered,
but Israel’s record of fair, free elections testifies to the depth of its
homegrown democratic ethos, reinforced by a vig­orous press and a vigilant
judiciary.

Israel
is alsomore securethan
ever. In 1948, only 700,000 Jews faced the daunting challenge of winning
independence against the arrayed armies of the Arab world. Ben-Gurion’s top com­manders
warned him that Israel had only a 50-50 chance of victory. Today, there are
over six million Israeli Jews, and Israel is among the world’s most formidable
military powers. It has aqualitative edgeover
any imaginable combination of enemies, and the ongoing digitalization of
warfare has played precisely to Israel’s strengths. The Arab states have
dropped out of the competition, leaving the field to die-hard Islamists on
Israel’s borders. They champion “resistance,” but their primitive rocketry and
tunnel digging are ineffective. The only credible threat to a viable Israel
would be a nuclear Iran. No one doubts that if Iran ever breaks out, Israel
could deploy its own nuclear deterrent, independent of any constraining
alliance.

And what of the Palestinians? There is no
near solution to this enduring conflict, but Israel has been adept at
containing its effects. There is occupied territory, but there is also
unoccupied territory. Israel maintains an over-the-horizon security footprint
in most of the West Bank; Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation fills in
most of the gaps. The Palestinian Authority, in the words of one wag, has
become a “mini-Jordan,” buttressed by a combination of foreign aid, economic
growth, and the usual corruption. By the standards of today’s Middle East, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflictremains stable. It is
prosecuted mostly at a distance, through maneuvering in international bodies
and campaigns for and against BDS. These are high-decibel, low-impact
confrontations. Yossi Vardi, Israel’s most famous high-tech entrepreneur,summarizesthe
mainstream Israeli view: “I’m not at all concerned about the economic effect of
BDS. We have been subject to boycotts before.” And they were much worse.

Every
political party in Israel has its own preferred solution to the conflict, but
no solution offers an unequivocal advantage over the status quo. “The occupation
as it is now can last forever, and it is better than any alternative”—this
opinion,issuedin
April by Benny Ziffer, the literary editor of the liberal, left-wingHaaretz,
summarizes the present Israeli consensus. It is debatable whether the two-state
option hasexpired. But the reality
on the ground doesn’t resemble one state either. Half a century after the 1967
war, only five percent of Israelis live in West Bank settlements, and half of
them live in the five blocs that would be retained by Israel in any two-state
scenario.

In the meantime, Egypt, Jordan,Saudi Arabia, and the
United Arab Emirates are all shaking hands with Israel, some­times before the
cameras. Israel and Russia are assiduously courting each other; still farther
afield, Israel’s relations with China and India are booming. The genuine pariah
of the Middle East is the Syrian regime, which never deigned to make peace with
Israel. This last so-called steadfast Arab state is consumed from within by a
great bloodbath; its nuclear project and massive stocks of chemical weapons are
a distant memory.

Israel
faces all manner of potential threats and challenges, but never has it been
more thoroughly prepared to meet them. The notion popular among some Israeli
pundits that their compatriots live in a perpetual state of paralyzing fear
misleads both Israel’s allies and its adversaries. Israel’s leaders are
cautious but confident, not easily panicked, and practiced in the very long
game that everyone plays in the Middle East. Nothing leaves them so unmoved as
the vacuous mantra that the status quo is unsustainable. Israel’s survival has
always depended on its willingness to sustain the status quo that it has
created, driving its adversaries to resignation—and compromise. This is more an
art than a science, but such resolve has served Israel well over time.

THE SUPERPOWER RETREATS

Still, there is a looming cloud on Israel’s
horizon. It isn’t Iran’s delayed nukes, academe’s threats of boycott, or
Palestinian maneuvers at the UN. It is a huge power vacuum. The United States,
after a wildly erratic spree of misadventures, isbacking outof
the region. It is cutting its exposure to a Middle East that has consistently
defied American expecta­tions and denied successive American presidents the
“mission accomplished” moments they crave. The disengage­ment began before
Obama entered the White House, but he has accelerated it, coming to see the
Middle East as a region to be avoided because it “could not be fixed—not on his
watch, and not for a generation to come.” (This was the bottom-line impression
of the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, to whom Obama grantedhis legacy interviewon
foreign policy.)

If history is precedent, this is more than a
pivot. Over the last century, the Turks, the British, the French, and the
Russians each had their moment in the Middle East, but prolonging it proved
costly as their power ebbed. They gave up the pursuit of dominance and settled
for influence. A decade ago, in the pages of this magazine, Richard Haass, the
president of the Council on Foreign Relations,predictedthat
the United States had reached just this point: “The American era in the Middle
East,” he announced, “. . . has ended.” He went on: “The United States will
continue to enjoy more influence in the region than any other outside power,
but its influence will be reduced from what it once was.” That was a debatable
proposition in 2006; now in 2016, Obama has made it indisputable.

There
are several ways to make a retreat seem other than it is. The Obama
administration’s tack has been to create the illusion of a stable equilibrium,
by cutting the United States’ commitments to its allies and mollifying its
adversaries. And so, suddenly, none of the United States’ traditional friends
is good enough to justify its full confidence. The great power must conceal its
own weariness, so it pretends to be frustrated by the inconstancy of “free
riders.” The result­ing complaints about Israel (as well as Egypt and Saudi
Arabia) serve just such a narrative.

Israel’s leaders aren’t shy about warning
against the consequences of this posture, but they are careful not to think out
loud about Israeli options ina post-American Middle East.
Israel wants a new memo­randum of understanding with the United States, the
bigger the better, as compensation for the Iran nuclear deal. It is in Israel’s
interest to emphasize the importance of the U.S.-Israeli rela­tionship as the
bedrock of regional stability going forward.

But how far forward is another question. Even
as Israel seeks to deepen the United States’ commitment in the short term, it
knows that the unshakable bond won’t last in perpetuity. This is a lesson of
history. The leaders of the Zionist movement always sought to ally their project
with the dominant power of the day, but they had lived through too much
European history to think that great power is ever abiding. In the twentieth
century, they witnessed the collapse of old empires and the rise of new ones,
each staking its claim to the Middle East in turn, each making promises and
then rescinding them. When the United States’ turn came, the emerging
superpower didn’t rush to embrace the Jews. They were alone during the 1930s,
when the gates of the United States were closed to them. They were alone during
the Holocaust, when the United States awoke too late. They were alone in 1948,
when the United States placed Israel under an arms embargo, and in 1967, when a
U.S. president explicitly told the Israelis that if they went to war, they
would be alone.

After
1967, Israel nestled in the Pax Americana. The subsequent decades of the
“special relationship” have so deepened Israel’s dependence on the United
States in the military realm that many Israelis can no longer remember how
Israel managed to survive without all that U.S. hardware. Israel’s own armies
of supporters in the United States, especially in the Jewish community,
reinforce this mindset as they assure themselves that were it not for their
lobbying efforts in Washington, Israel would be in mortal peril.

But the Obama administration has given
Israelis a preview of just how the unshakable bond is likely to be shaken. This
prospect might seem alarming to Israel’s supporters, but the inevitable turn of
the wheel was precisely the reason Zionist Jews sought sovereign independence
in the first place. An independent Israel is a guarantee against the day when
the Jews will again find themselves alone, and it is an operating premise of
Israeli strategic thought that such a day will come.

ISRAEL ALONE

This conviction, far from paralyzing Israel,
propels it toexpand its options,
diversify its relationships, and build its independent capabilities. The Middle
East of the next 50 years will be differ­ent from that of the last 100. There
will be no hegemony-seeking outside powers. The costs of pursuing full-spectrum
dominance are too high; the rewards are too few. Outside powers will pursue
specific goals, related to oil or terrorism. But large swaths of the Middle
East will be left to their fate, to dissolve and re-form in unpredictable ways.
Israel may be asked by weaker neighbors to extend its security net to include
them, as it has done for decades for Jordan. Arab concern about Iran is already
doing more to normalize Israel in the region than the ever-elusive and
ever-inconclusive peace process. Israel, once the fulcrum of regional conflict,
will loom like a pillar of regional stability—not only for its own people but
also for its neighbors, threatened by a rising tide of political fragmentation,
economic contraction, radical Islam, and sectarian hatred.

So
Israel is planning to outlast the United States in the Middle East. Israelis
roll their eyes when the United States insinuates that it best understands
Israel’s genuine long-term interests, which Israel is supposedly too
traumatized or confused to discern. Although Israel has made plenty of tactical
mistakes, it is hard to argue that its strategy has been anything but a
success. And given the wobbly record of the United States in achieving or even
defining its interests in the Middle East, it is hard to say the same about
U.S. strategy. The Obama administration has placed its bet on the Iran deal,
but even the deal’s most ardent advocates no longer claim to see the “arc of
history” in the Middle East. In the face of the collapse of the Arab Spring,
the Syrian dead, the millions of refugees, and the rise of the Islamic State,
or ISIS, who can say in which direction the arc points? Or where the Iran deal
will lead?

One other common Amerintra deserves to be shelved. “Precisely because of
our friendship,” said Obama five years ago, “it is important that we tell the
truth: the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to
advance a lasting peace.” It is time for the United States to abandon this
mantra, or at least modify it. Only if Israel’s adversaries conclude that
Israel can sustain the status quo indefinitely—Israel’s military supremacy, its
economic advantage, and, yes, its occupation—is there any hope that they will
reconcile themselves to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Statements like
Obama’s don’t sway Israel’s government, which knows better, but they do fuel
Arab and Iranian rejection of Israel among those who believe that the United
States no longer has Israel’s back. For Israel’s enemies, drawing the
conclusion that Israel is thus weak would be a tragic mistake: Israel is well
positioned to sustain the status quo all by itself. Its long-term strategy is
predicated on it.

A
new U.S. administration will offer an opportunity to revisit U.S. policy, or at
least U.S. rhetoric. One of the candidates, Hillary Clinton, madea statementas
secretary of state in Jerusalem in 2010 that came closer to reality and
practicality. “The status quo is unsustainable,” she said, echoing the usual
line. But she added this: “Now, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be sustained
for a year or a decade, or two or three, but fundamentally, the status quo is
unsustainable.” Translation: the status quo may not be optimal, but it is
sustainable, for as long as it takes.

As
the United States steps back from the Middle East, this is the message
Washington should send if it wants to assist Israel and other U.S. allies in
filling the vacuum it will leave behind

Saturday, June 4, 2016

SECURITY MESSAGE FOR U.S. CITIZENS: JERUSALEM AND NAKSA DAYS & RAMADANSunday, June 5, 2016, will mark the commemoration of two separate events: Jerusalem Day and Naksa Day.Jerusalem Day is a Government of Israel celebration of Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem during the 1967 War. The day is marked by ceremonies, and large gatherings, and a march through Jerusalem. In previous years, clashes have erupted between Israeli and Palestinian residents during marches.This year’s main march will begin at 5:30 p.m. at Sacher Park, and conclude in the Old City. The Israeli National Police (INP) will enforce road closures throughout Jerusalem. The following street closures will be in effect:• 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: Bezalel and Mordehai A`liash St.• 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.: King George (from Tsarfat Square to Nathan Strauss Street), Agron (and adjacent streets), Shlomo HaMelekh, King David, Hativat Yerushalayim, Sultan Suleiman, Jericho Road, Ma’ale Hashalom, and Sderot Haim Bar Lev (from Moshe Sachs junction near Grand Court Hotel, to Hativat Yerushalayim).Naksa Day (“Day of the Setback”) is observed by some Palestinians to mark Israel’s conquest and occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967. Palestinians have sometimes commemorated the day with protests and demonstrations in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. While the Consulate General is unaware of specific planned activities in Jerusalem, demonstrations and counter-demonstrations have occurred in past Naksa Days which resulted in clashes with INP.Consulate General employees and family members are encouraged to exercise caution when traveling throughout Jerusalem, especially the Old City on Sunday, June 5. If they do travel to the Old City they are being told to avoid the use of the Damascus, Lion’s, and Herod’s Gates. This year, Ramadan is expected to commence on/about June 6 and conclude on/about July 5. For U.S. Direct Hire (USDH) employees and family members the Old City is off-limits on Fridays during the month of Ramadan due to overall congestion and associated security concerns. An increased number of visitors, heavy police presence, and traffic restrictions in and around Jerusalem’s Old City are expected. United States citizens are reminded to maintain awareness of their safety and surroundings while living and working in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel. Large gatherings, even ones intended to be peaceful, can turn confrontational and escalate into violence. Please be aware of your surroundings, monitor local information sources, and maintain a high degree of situational awareness as appropriate for this complex and fluid security environment.We take this opportunity to remind U.S. citizens to review the Travel Warning issued for Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza on December 16, 2015 and the Worldwide Cautionissued on March 3, 2016. For further information: · Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive security messages and make it easier to locate you in an emergency. · Contact the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, located at 14 David Flusser, telephone (972) (2) 622-7230. Contact the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, located at 71 Hayarkon, telephone (972) (3) 519-7575. If you are a U.S. citizen in need of urgent assistance outside of business hours, you may call the emergency after-hours number either in Tel Aviv at (972) (3) 519-7551 or Jerusalem at (972) (2) 622-7250.· Call 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or 1-202-501-4444 from other countries from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).· Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.****I decided to google "Conquest of Jerusalem" and found
the first reference to the Conquest
of Jerusalem by King David some 3000 years ago . Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, Allenby captured
it